Android faced many issues when it came to market -- ranging from uneven quality to security to who actually owned the underlying technology. Systematically over time many of these individual issues have been corrected, but another more interesting problem has emerged: the question of Android’s future.

For the most part Android, like iOS, was conceived to be a mobile operating system for small devices. However, as we move to capabilities that allow us to take a mobile device and scale it up to a larger screen and provide the potential for a pocketable device to become our only device, Android’s shortcomings are limiting its growth.

Now Google has another platform, Chrome, to address this larger growth opportunity, but it isn’t similar to Android and the market appears to want a device that starts small and moves up not one that starts large and moves down. This is likely because adding screen real estate to something is pretty easy, but taking it away can dramatically reduce the functionality of the device.